THE ßOOf\DA TOUCH with a challenge: "If the Navy is to re- gain its soul and its respect, the answer lies in the right kind of leaders. Leaders who understand that the seemingly ar- cane concepts of tradition, loyalty, dis- cipline and moral courage have carried the Navy through cyclical turbulence in peace and war. . . . It is time to give the Navy back to such leaders." The mid- shipmen gave Webb a standing ova- tion-one that the Pentagon could not fail to notice. I F Mike Boorda believed he needed to redeem himself after the Arthur de- bacle, he had no shortage of opportu- nity. The ongoing Tailhook purge pro- VIded a vast supply of perceived outrages, the most notable of which was the case of a forty-four-year-old commander named Robert Elmer StumpE Stumpf was something close to the Navy's poster-boy ideal-handsome, smart, a brilliant fighter pilot, an un- questioned war hero. In the Gulf War, he was one of the earliest pilots over Baghdad during the first night of the war, flying his F-18 Hornet through heavy anti-aircraft fire to take out Sad- dam Hussein's radar installations; he flew twenty-two combat missions in all, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross, among other citations for valor. After the war, Stumpf was chosen as com- mander of the élite Blue Angels squad- ron, the Navy's demonstration flight team that perfonns in air shows around the world, and in that role he became the first American to fly a fighter over Moscow since the Second World War. In 1994, he was recommended for com- mand of a carrier air wing which re- quired a promotion to the rank of cap- tain. A promotion board put his name on a list of nominees for captain's rank, and the list was approved by Secretary Dalton and by the Secretary of Defense. Stumpf's promotion was routinely approved by the Senate that May, along with the promotions of more than a hundred others. But before it took effect the Navy discovered a problem: Stumpf had not been "flagged," though he had been sent to T ailhook in 1991 to receive an award for his fighter squadron as Best in the Navy. The evening after receiv- ing the award, he attended a party or- ganized by his men to celebrate their re- cent "wetting down"-Navy talk for DEMO(IR 1'( Pf\\RIY ACCESS @ @ Jl@@ A dOIÆ l,l'JlIt OIVJòÍ Gdfe e w,t TeJ KenYled J o fU:\I1ch fries wltl Pt\t Mo n' ho..V1' . . . . ........-...... ,( \ 1 9 :;Ä t -- A ð f / l lN2- , tt ' ì - \ -v , 1 , I' / ) I , / C - , :> -:-"'> c::::: r ,--:;:: , - _ 'C , , . --- - ----- ...:.. ," ...... ::::.../ '- - , ------ --- ' - )./ -- '"-- -==-- --- ....---.. (L . ctv-J